Darnelite Argan

The Darnelite Argan – officially, the Argan of the Inner Harmony, but familiarly named after its founder Gina Darnel (1846–1919) – is a dissident argan within the Cairan Reformation. Emerging as part of the greater counterculture and political reaction that characterised Savam as it began to industrialise during the later 19th century. The argan has grown since the end of the Long War to become the largest dissident body within the Reformation, with approximately 30 million adherents. Most Darnelites are Savamese, with smaller numbers in Brex-Sarre, Emilia, and Transvechia.

Philosophy

The argan preaches a mystical and utilitarian, individualistic and egalitarian philosophy, in which the Restoration is reduced almost exclusively to the inner self. Practice leans hard into paramaterialism, giving little value to cairon engineering; this stance distances them from the mainstream permaterialist position within the Reformation.

Self-examination and cleansing are coloured by the hedonist nature of the sect: channelling should be achieved through positive and pleasant experiences. A notable – and controversial – manifestation here lies in the sexual rituals practised in Fertility Sanctuaries: Darnelites see these as equal to the more customary water or fire-cleansing. The Darnelites still organise devotionals, but less regularly than other Reformer groups; much collective worship is replaced by small ceremonies attended by groups of relatives and close friends.

History

Darnel’s reform

Gina Darnel in her 30s, painted by Rouan Ronsart, 1879.

Gina Darnel originally came to prominence in the city of Poignes, in southern Dordanie, during the 1870s. Darnel, originally from Occois close to Savam’s border with Cantaire, was a Reform cleric associated with the Fertility Order; she was a prominent figure within the lively counterculture of a city which, at this time, rivalled Quesailles for its freewheeling and intellectually ferocious café thought. While her wit, vivacity and undeniable beauty made her very welcome within the city’s high society, Darnel was a deep thinker within the bounds of Cairan philosophy, whose arguments on the nature of cairon and how the Reformation could be attained would prove attractive to many and spread widely.

Darnel’s cornerstone work, Principes du plaisir au service de l’intra-cairon et de la société (in Ellish “Principles of Pleasure to Benefit Inner Cairon and Society”); was developed over several years before its publication in 1877. Building on previous utilitarian examinations of Cairan practice, Principes diverged in two key aspects as Darnel made an argument that Restoration was a task wholly beyond the scope of any individual, focusing sharply on the maintenance of inner cairon as the most effective tool to that end on the basis that the improvement of the individual would have a cascading effect across the wider world, and setting out the theories of felicific calculus, by which she proposed to measure and quantify actions for their efficacy. Although utility calculus had previously been done in a quantified fashion within the Cairan sphere – as opposed to the qualitative approach taken by many thinkers on the subject, such as by early libertarians – Darnel’s approach was the most advanced approach seen to date.

While the details passed the understanding of many, Darnel’s overriding message – that self-satisfaction and self-improvement were the keys to the Restoration – resonated among the upper echelons of society (in particular to the extent that it justified forms of self-indulgence that the conservative elements of the Argan of Savam frowned upon). Her message was accepted widely enough that she felt herself able to step away from the Order to establish an independent argan in 1883; and she continued to press her challenging theories through theological journals and the wider press throughout the 1880s. The pushback by mainstream Cairan conservatives (including an unpleasant ad hominem attack on her in an argan-backed journal in 1886) may, indeed, have worked to Darnel’s benefit in raising her profile and driving wider public interest in her theories.

The collective position

Darnel and her colleagues quickly recognised, and leaned into, the impact of their opinions on contemporary politics; but a distinct problem for them from an early point was the attention paid to her theories by the developing strand of collectivism in Savamese society. There was a certain intersection of interests between the two groups – and several prominent early collectivists aligned behind Darnel, including the pioneer Léonie-Sylvie Bassorelle, out of a shared belief that Savam was essentially being run by, and for the benefit of, a small and self-selecting elite. However, the link was tenuous in many ways, and may well have been played up by the authorities to conflate them and ease any actions against them.

The developing argan did throw its weight behind some collectivist campaigns, and Darnel was openly contemptuous of the notion that money could buy influence, stating in one journal essay that “a pound of gold will never bridge the facets for you”. She and other arganic leaders remained persons of interest to the police and the authorities more generally, and several of them, including Darnel herself, were arrested and questioned after some “inflammatory” speeches supporting the track-layers’ strikes in 1887 and 1888.

However, even by this time the collectivists were beginning to drift away from the Darnelites. Bassorelle led an argument that felicific calculus should be applied at the level of society as a whole, with any benefit accruing to one person being subsumed into that going to the community – to the outrage of Darnel, who saw in this the replacement of one oppressive monolith by another and a betrayal of egalitarian principles. Over time this would become a much clearer division, with the argan supporting measures helping the individual before the group. In this context, it largely spearheaded an emergent debate over the nature of gender roles in Cairan society, making the argument that an individual could not be “confined” to the positions that society deemed to be “proper” if this would weaken that person’s inner cairon.

The Labarre years

Perhaps Darnel’s most serious misstep was in the period around the beginning of the Embute War. The argan loudly called out what she saw as warmongering by the government, and it forcibly denounced the war when it began in 1889. This was not, of itself, a controversy, in that the senseless slaughter and destruction of warfare was a clear fall on the path to Restoration. However, Darnel poorly read the public mood, which strongly supported the war as it began – with even the Argan of Savam taking a lower-key and more politically pragmatic line. Clerics and members of the argan were arrested and investigated by the authorities in numbers before Darnel began to walk back some of her more contentious statements.

However, as the course of the war went steadily worse for Savam and sympathies for it began to evaporate, some of this stance came back into view – with Darnel adding a hint of self-justification in places – and a good deal of the damage to the argan’s reputation had been restored by 1893 and the signing of the Treaty of Ráth which restored the peace.

For the authorities, the two movements were both problematic religious sects, although collectivism was much more subversive following its radicalisation in the 1870s and its active involvement in labour disputes. The Darnelites were notably targeted for publicly supporting striking workers; strike action remained a criminal offence in the country until a 1906 legislation pushed by viceroy Valentin d'Hoste-Labarre. Labarre was actually quite tolerant of the Argan, probably thanks to his populism. Darnelites came to view him as a positive force in Savam, especially during his second term, as he adopted policies that were generally supported by the group (although many saw him as too moderate). On his death in 1916 he was declared an exemplar by the Darnelites, and Darnel’s eulogy of him is remembered as her last famous literary contribution. Nonetheless, the argan was considered to be a subversive force by many within the authorities for most of the Labarrist Age.

Growth to recognition

By the turn of the century, the Darnelite movement had spread outside of its base in Occois and avant-garde cities (notably Bar, Belny, and Quesailles) to touch larger populations in urban areas throughout the countries. Generally, the movement was introduced through intellectual circles in a city's café culture and spread to progressive-minded intellectuals and the bourgeoisie. Darnelism remained associated with the upper-middle class, and had little traction within the working class, which remained either quite conservative or was enthralled by collectivism. Nonetheless, the political positions of the Darnelites in favour of workers' rights allowed them to start slowly spreading into less well-off social groups. They were also very vocally in favour of respopular reform during the 1903 Suffrage Crisis.

A major turning point for spreading their message outside of the intellectual class was the so-called Taurive debate of 1912. Throughout 1911 Darnel had engaged in a long-winded public debate by correspondence with Archmatron Célia d'Avrilly via the press. D'Avrilly was a major figure in the Argan of Savam, notably known for her positions within its councils. The "debate" consisted of increasingly hostile editorials published in various publications. In early 1912, the famous journalist Firmin Goncourt proposed that the two women meet for a live debate to be hosted by his Taurive-based newspaper, Le Télégramme. The meeting took place on 30 Estion, with Goncourt prevailing upon the city council for its main chamber to host the debate; while it perhaps did not move many from their entrenched positions, the debate, and the newspaper’s reporting of it, did much to reduce some of Darnel’s popular image as something of a strident fanatic and to elevate the argan’s profile across the country.

• spreads to some elites in the 10s and 20s, leading to more recognition
• founder of savamese psychoanalysis largely inspired by Darnelism

Darnel's death and her legacy

Un vide a frappé l'intra-Cairon de tous. La grande dame n'est plus. Elle est maintenant pleinement réunie avec le Grand Mathématicien de l'Univers. Puisse-t-elle résoudre les équations de félicité des deux facettes et continuer de nous guider vers la restoration aux cotés de l'Architecte.

— Matron Yolande Dumes, 4 Conservene 1919

The death of Darnel in Floridy 1919 – at the age of 73, after a severe stroke which had left her partially paralysed and unable to speak meaningfully – held the potential to shatter the argan; that it weathered this storm can fairly be ascribed to Yolande Dumes, who had been Darnel’s deputy for some eight years. Dumes, a small and sparely-built woman, was in many ways the antithesis of the much more flamboyant Darnel, but she had been diligent in bringing a sense of formal organisation to a body which was – and to some degree remains – much more loosely constructed and governed than mainstream argans.

Dumes’ ferociously argued summary and defence of the legacy of la grande dame at Saint-Alban in Conservene has been seen as a reinvigoration of the Darnelites. “Saint Gina”, as she had been styled informally, was officially given that title; her body was returned to Poignes, where it was cremated and her ashes and hair were placed into six reliquaries.

Dumes’ more restrained stewardship may have reassured the more fearful elements of the Cairan mainstream, and she did direct its activities more visibly away from the grand-scale changes argued by the collectivists. During the early 1920s, the Darnelites argued loudly for greater equality between men and women within Savamese society, making the position that they had been created thus by Aedif and should not be differentiated on from another. A significant breakthrough here was changes made to property law in 1923 which abolished coverture and allowed women to own assets and real property independently of their husbands.

The sense of détente between the Darnelites and the wider Reformation led to an important concession in 1925, when Dumes was invited to attend the reformer Ecumenical Sorority in Etamps-La-Sainte for the first time. Another similarly momentous event was the Visseau accords, a meeting between Dumes and Empress Virginie on the All Saints’ Feast day (22 Estion) 1928; this was, in some respects, a political accommodation managed by the Argan of Savam to regularise (and, hopefully, to negate) the “non-standard” practices of the Darnelites. Although Darnel’s sainthood was not recognised by the Argan of Savam, the meeting did confirm her being accepted as an exemplar by the state argan.

Mid-century difficulties

Recognition – limited and tentative as it may have been – did not, in and of itself, imply acceptance by any means. Although the presence of the much less flamboyant Dumes at the Darnelite helm allowed the more panicky conservatives to loosen their grasp on their pearl necklaces, the new Holy Mother did not resile from Darnel’s positions, and the reputation of the argan for “harbouring reprobates and libertines under the pretext of the Restoration” continued.

This would, indeed, be graphically demonstrated in the infamous Lumonois scandal in 1931, in which the Quènien noblewoman Héloïse de Lumonois was made public as a Darnelite, along with her three children. The spillage onto her husband was brutal; Maxime Cuissard de Lumonois, a chancellor in the government, had learned of this shortly after he married the then-widowed Héloise in 1928, but had kept this secret during his own political rise to avoid the inevitable alienation of his support base within the Clerical Association. The rending of his reputation was enough to force his resignation from the Council of the Chancellorship and the Assembly of Nobles.

Nor was the Darnelites’ position helped by the support which they lent to collectivist positions. Dumes – and even Darnel in her later years – had sought to separate collectivist thought, which was accepted if not often approved of, from violent actions in support thereof, which were usually crimes by any reasonable definition. They had striven to cast the argan’s view of the Restoration in purely individual terms, but the effect on society of even small changes could often not help but be felt on a more collective level, and many Darnelite clerics were much less circumspect than their officers in lending their intellectual support and, often, their practical assistance. This was a particular issue in the early years of the Felician insurgency in the 1910s.

A particular front in which the Darnelites were active was in what became a much wider phenomenon of women leaving hearth and home and entering the labour force more widely. This was becoming visible during the later 1930s and 1940s, although its full fruits would probably not be seen until after the Long War; it was firmly encouraged by the argan as a recognition that customary gender roles could hamper a woman’s inner cairon and hold her back along her own path to Restoration. Gloire Maçon, a Darnelite cleric from the north of Quesailles, was one of its chief pathfinders along this road, with her collection of essays on the issue, À nous la monde! (Quesailles, 1952) becoming a milestone along it for feminists in the Cairosphere.

[...]

Darnelites strongly criticised the anti-Orthodoxist measures taken during the Puritan wave of violence in 1951-52 and until 1956. Some Darnelites even advocated wearing a badge in solidarity with the Orthodoxists. The argan came into direct opposition of the government in 1953 when the Liberal government ordered the Interior Security Directorate to extend the Safety Register, at that point limited to Orthodoxists, to the Darnelites and other dissident argans. Holy Mother Aurore Mettochi attempted to fight this decision in the Supreme Federal Court but the case was dismissed at the beginning of Dominy; the Darnelite Restorers’ Register was seized at the end of that month.

The argan was also the victim of some violence. Although a few incidents came from reformers angry at minor religious groups, most of the violence came from Puritans, for whom Darnelism was a particularly perverted version of the Reformation and contained "pagan" elements. On 18 Fabricad 1952 three armed men entered a Darnelite marriage ceremony in Aix-en-Garde and gunned down twelve people; a similar attack killed seven in late Fabricad in Porians.

During the 1950s Darnelite mathematician Mathurin Blesois made major contributions to modern decision theory.

[...]

Post-Long War renaissance

Sentiment in Savam changed drastically as the country’s economy threw off the restrictions of the 1940s and 1950s, with a surge against any suggestion of austerity and repression. The most visible manifestations were probably among young people in general, and women of all ages, who in many ways felt betrayed by the “old-school” leadership and were eager for changes that would reflect their aspirations. The Darnelite Argan’s attitudes, centred on the notion that Reconstruction began with the needs of the individual, seemed tailor-made for the times, and its Holy Mother, Élodie Vernier, became something of a style icon after her elevation in 1964; relatively young for her office at only 46 years of age, Vernier largely eschewed clerical robes and projected an image of near-effortless chic that would not have been out of place in the style-conscious Quesailles city centre.

Vernier was, indeed, probably the most explicitly politically minded Holy Mother in the argan’s recent history. She made little secret of her support for the Radical faction in the Assembly of Commons as it harassed a Liberal government under Claude Festrel which increasingly looked like a musty relic of an uncomfortable past. As the Radicals themselves turned to generational change at the top as the viceregal elections of 1970 loomed up, much of the long-held concerns of Savamese parliamentarians over the “extremes” of Darnelism seemed to fade away.

While Dominique Malleray was not herself a Darnelite, she borrowed much of their raiment as she shoved aside the old Radical order to become the party’s leader in 1968. A well-remembered image of the time showed Malleray and Vernier side-by-side at a rally to encourage young people to register for the election, naming them les sœurs sourire (“the Smile Sisters”) and perhaps cementing a perception of Malleray – the daughter of a Quesailles-based veterinary doctor, and the first woman and first person outside the nobility to be a serious viceregal contender – as the harbinger of the future.

For many Darnelites, that future was one which men and women shared equally; clerics of the argan were prominent in many of the challenges made by women seeking to enter male-dominated professions. A notable example here was the legal case of Broussard v École Téchnnologique de Bénovie in 1968, in which the plaintiff, a Darnelite lay worker, was being denied admission to an industrial engineering course.

The perhaps less-publicised obverse of that coin was their involvement in advancing men’s roles in women’s fields – most immediately positions in nursing and childcare (where male Darnelites were already active in the argan’s cotutelage functions), but more directly acknowledging the role played by men within Cairony itself. While men had led Darnelite services in the past – a manifestation of the argan’s lesser rigour on this role – this was deliberately pushed forward. In 1969, Dorian Meunier, a lay worker from Bar, in western Savam, became the first male to be ordained as a Cairan cleric in at least six hundred years, when he was granted the sash in a ceremony in Quesailles. Outrage within the Argan of Savam was palpable – with some angry claims that this was a flagrant breach of the Visseau accords and that the Darnelites should be proscribed.

For all their significance, these disputes paled in the face of the argan's advocacy for the rights of women to abortion during the 1960s and 1970s. Cairony has always placed a high value on procreation and parenthood among the faithful – to such an extent that those unable to have children have been shunned, at times – but it remained ambivalent on the idea of contraception, on the basis that an unwanted pregnancy negatively impacted upon the inner cairon of the parents, and that of society by extension. This developed into a support for methods which did not preclude the possibility of conception entirely, including the use of prophylactics by men and, if not abstinence, then at least workarounds such as the withdrawal method (la loterie arganique, as it was nicknamed). In theological terms, Cairony maintained that a link between the physical and spiritual facets was formed at the moment of conception and could not be broken without damage. This was only negated where the mother’s life was at risk, or in the case of pregnancies caused through acts of rape or incest, where the nature of the act was held to be irreversibly damaging in itself and a termination seen as justified.

Argument in favour downplayed this risk; positing that the damage to cairon created by an early termination was no different in its essentials to that done by a stillbirth, and that, done to a new and weak caironic link, it was much less than the damage done to the fully formed link within the mother, there was some substantial argument that the link essentially dissipated at this point. To that end, the Restoration was advanced by the termination; and the Darnelites argued further that the spiritual condition of the mother necessarily outweighed that of the unborn child. Darnelite clerics played an important role as facilitators to “underground” abortion clinics, and some were investigated as accessories in several prosecutions; this included a part in the case of Flibert v Pierroise (1971), the decision in Brocquie that acknowledged formally that, since the law was framed against “illegal” termimations, it thus acknowledged that some were legal.

Influence and controversy

Despite its small size, the Darnelite Argan has had a significant philosophical and societal influence on Savam since the 1960s, notably influencing feminist thought and certain aspects of the liberalisation of Savamese society.

Darnelites espouse what they call a progressive view of gender roles in Cairan society, preaching that the principles of egalitarianism should also be applied there. Like any other Cairan sect, Darnelites believe that if a person has a passion or a strong interest in a career, this should be encouraged, as the spiritual satisfaction gained from such activities will improve inner cairon both for the individual and for society as a whole. However, because they take to the extreme the egalitarian idea that no-one is inherently better suited for Restoration than any other person, the Darnelites believe that even unconventional passions and careers should be encouraged; as an example, women with a deep interest in politics should be encouraged to pursue this as a career, because then her inner cairon will be improved and this will, in turn, benefit the whole society.

This does not mean that the Darnelites explicitly reject traditional gender roles; however, they will argue that non-traditional gender roles should be accepted as any as valid as traditional ones. Most pointedly, the argan – uniquely within Cairony – numbers males within its clergy, although they remain small in number and their ordination is not recognised by other Cairan bodies.

The Darnelites’ commitment to a utilitarian and egalitarian ethos positioned them as natural allies of the political New Orangist movement as it emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, and numerous New Orangists are either themselves Darnelites or have expressed open sympathies for its ethos.

The Darnelite Argan has been labelled by some detractors as the "feel-good argan" and equated to the collectivist movement, even though the Darnelites support no specific political ideology. Some critics have even labelled it the "pornographic argan" because of its hedonistic nature and the notion of sexual cleansing, which is often seen as incompatible with the virtue of frugality from the Fundamental Triangle. A healthy sex life is desirable in any Cairan interpretation, but Darnelites are regularly accused of over-emphasising it into the realm of debauchery, especially with their direct condoning of sexual practices, something from which mainstream argans (apart from the Fertility Order) usually withhold themselves. Contrary to mainstream Cairony, homosexuality of all form is largely accepted by the Darnelites.

The Darnelite Argan has been persecuted in a number of conservative countries, notably those where the national argans belong to the Orthodoxy. This was notably the case in pre-civil war Ceresora and Cantaire. The Darnelite Argan has a much more limited presence in countries belonging to the Dael rite; philosophical differences caused court proceedings and a short-lived cause célèbre in Elland in 1985, and the Darnelitea are wholly proscribed in Odann.

Structure

The Darnelite Argan displays some notable differences in practice from the traditional Cairan paradigm. While its clerics are regarded as properly ordained – previous “lapses” in protocol being retroactively recognised by the Visseau accords – the modern process of recognition as a Darnelite cleric is much less structured, and the usual practice of attendance and study through a renunciary is not used; the path of accreditation is much more a one-to-one relationship between a temple matron and her student/protégée. The argan permits lay members to direct collective worship in absence of an ordained cleric, which would be acceptable only in extremis elsewhere in the Reform (and, indeed, in the Orthodoxy also). Much of this position has of necessity been forced on the argan; even today, more than a century after its establishment, the Darnelite Argan has a much smaller clergy than its size would suggest and its facilities and administrative support structures are similarly much more reduced.

Darnelites also differ in allowing all professed members of the argan a vote in choosing a new Holy Mother when the role falls open. Compared to the Cairan mainstream, the Darnelite clergy is much reduced in numbers; indeed, the argan authorises its lay members to direct collective worship if they wish to do so, thanks to the concept of autonomism. The Darnelite clergy is thus mostly composed of matrons and their immediate staff, tasked with the administration of the argan's affairs (such as the maintenance of the Restorers' Register, or the argan's properties) in large regions. All members of the argan can take part in the election of the Holy Mother, although the argan still has a sorority.